And apparently-- Dylan Mulvaney is responsible for this change.
Well done, Dylan! "For he's a jolly good fellow/for he's a jolly good fellow..."
For most of advertising history, "red" or "blue" as partisan loyalty signaled more your taste for Coke or Pepsi than your identity as Republican or Democrat. Mass markets, by definition, necessitated selling to both sides of the aisle.
As with so much else, the presidency of Donald Trump -- built upon a self-conceived human brand -- radically upended those norms.
Post-2016 election, one Adweek column thundered, "Brands cannot expect to play Switzerland as the rest of the world picks a side." Consumer culture suddenly became the vehicle for political expression, with Madison Avenue giving voice to countless causes. The staid "corporate social responsibility" morphed into the more muscular "brand purpose," which beget impassioned activism. Social justice became "trendy;" politics, the means to signal commercial "integrity."
Today, just as during the Trump presidency, controversial issues abound, protesters convulse public spaces, and a divisive election looms. The world is picking sides -- on abortion and Gaza and Trump's trials. And from brand-land? By and large, the sound of silence.
That's because, despite prior pretense, advertising follows, not leads; it needs markets, not morality. That silence, therefore, says much about our sociopolitical moment: As culture warriors find themselves on the defensive, brands, wary from the backlash against Bud Light's use of a trans influencer, no longer show interest in advancing their causes.
Indeed, today's primary "cause" -- and, arguably, election issue -- is lower on the hierarchy of needs: cost of living. That makes for a more practical, less symbolic battleground for commercial content.
In 2024, whatever else might happen, the revolution will not be advertised.
...
Previously, we thought, "If I'm going to buy paper towels, are they useful? Are they inexpensive?" one marketing executive explained to me. By 2020, "societal issues [had] become brand attributes ... in terms of product purchases." The question became: How "woke" are your paper towels?
If the ads of the 2010s felt like they were talking back to Trump, you're not mistaken. Like other domains of cultural production -- journalism, the popular arts, academia -- brand-land leans left. For many such news topics invoked commercially -- race, guns, the environment -- creative professionals couldn't conceive of there being "two sides" to the story.
And the sheer variety of issues that brands subsequently embraced could crowd K Street. Levi's and Delta demanded gun control. Nike amplified Colin Kaepernick's Black Lives Matter kneel, as did some $50 billion in corporate pledges toward racial equality. Patagonia rejected Trump's signature legislation -- an "irresponsible tax cut," its CEO accused -- by giving its $10 million in corporate windfall to environmental groups.
...
The personal has, of course, long been political, but during the 45th presidency, the civic became commercial as never before. Then, just as quickly as it had stormed the barricades, Madison Avenue abandoned them.
...
Again, commercial communication follows, not leads. Advertising's activist retreat mirrors a reversal in public sentiment, perhaps a post-pandemic fatigue. One poll finds just 20 percent of Americans are now interested in corporations taking a stand on political issues or current events, and fewer than 30 percent want to hear brands opine on international conflict.
Curiously, among the least supported issues (for brand engagement, at least) are many that defined the commercial battlegrounds of the Trump years: police reform, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and abortion.
Former country music star Tim McGraw announced his partnership with Men in Girls Lockerrooms Gromer Gym Planet Fitness -- and then deleted it when he got pushback.
He also blocked Chaya Raichik for asking about it. He's still pimping the Groomer Underage Mixer Gym on Instagram.
In more Woke News:
Oh no -- the leftwing dark money slushfund, the Tides Foundation, is in a dispute with the Heroes of Black Lives Matter over a missing $8.7 million.
The left-wing dark money giant Tides Foundation raised more than $33 million on behalf of the national Black Lives Matter group during the George Floyd riots in 2020. Now, Black Lives Matter is suing Tides over its refusal to hand the funds back. There's just one problem--nearly $9 million of those funds have seemingly disappeared.
FreeBeacon
From 2020 through 2022, Tides transferred $8.7 million from the fund to Black Lives Matter Grassroots, an offshoot of the national Black Lives Matter group led by Melina Abdullah, a longtime activist and professor. But Black Lives Matter Grassroots reported to the IRS that it never received that money, and no one involved in the transactions will say what became of the funds. These discrepancies have left charity watchdogs mystified, while legal experts say they could lead to massive fines and penalties.
This story is based on interviews with Black Lives Matter activists and internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Together, they expose how the movement's mismanagement of its 2020 windfall was aided and abetted by a left-wing dark money machine, and went far beyond the purchase of swanky mansions and massive distributions to associates of its co-founder, Patrisse Cullors.
As the remnants of Black Lives Matter's windfall rapidly diminish, two factions have emerged seeking to establish control over the movement's remaining finances. On one side of the power struggle is Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the charity commonly referred to as the national Black Lives Matter group, which was responsible for purchasing a $6 million Los Angeles mansion in 2020 and granting $8 million to purchase a Canadian mansion in 2021. The Global Network Foundation received the bulk of the Black Lives Matter windfall in 2020--nearly $80 million. By June 2023, that endowment had been reduced to $29 million, according to tax documents released last week.
At the other end of the conflict is Black Lives Matter Grassroots, an offshoot of the Global Network Foundation that tried and failed to sue its progenitor for $10 million and allegedly abused its own charitable resources to finance overseas vacations for Abdullah, its director. Black Lives Matter Grassroots' finances are a complete mystery. There is no indication the charity has filed a public financial disclosure with the IRS, though it was due to file one by November 2023 at the latest.
In the middle of the struggle is the Tides Foundation, the left-wing dark money giant that raised more than $33 million on behalf of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, and now refuses to give what remains to either group.
The Global Network Foundation sued Tides in May over its refusal to relinquish the funds, arguing they were raised on its behalf. But behind the scenes, from 2020 through 2022, Abdullah led a committee of seven Black Lives Matter activists that convinced Tides to divert $8.7 million from the fund to Black Lives Matter Grassroots.
Whatever became of those millions is unclear. On paper, they seemingly disappeared.
See the article for the financial shenanigans.
This certainly makes it all sound ship-shape and on the level:
Black Lives Matter sources said Abdullah shielded Black Lives Matter Grassroots' finances from the public at the same time the Global Network Foundation was facing intense public scrutiny over its own finances. The Global Network Foundation secretly purchased a $6 million mansion in Los Angeles in 2020, which Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors later used to film a video of herself and Abdullah drinking wine and reflecting on the George Floyd riots.
In that video, which was filmed in June 2021, Abdullah railed against disgruntled activists and the press for demanding transparency of Black Lives Matter's finances.
"Who the fuck are you? You ain't done shit," Abdullah said while sipping on white wine and snacking on strawberries. "And you ain't doing no fucking work. You do no work. You're on Twitter. You have no following. And you're trying to gain a following by talking shit."
Around the time that video was filmed, Abdullah allegedly dipped into Black Lives Matter Grassroots' accounts to fund a personal vacation to Jamaica.
"Some members of the Grassroots team secretly took a book-writing retreat trip to Jamaica without notifying the entirety of the team, or without approving a budgetary expenditure," former Black Lives Matter Grassroots co-director Sandra Hudson wrote in a January 2022 memo to Tides. Hudson's leadership position with the group was terminated just weeks after she sent the memo, the activist said in a sworn declaration as part of Black Lives Matter Grassroots' failed lawsuit against the Global Network Foundation.
Abdullah described her Jamaica trip as a "vacation" during a private conversation with another Black Lives Matter activist in 2021.
"She mentioned that she had just come back from Jamaica for vacation and she went with some people with Grassroots," that Black Lives Matter activist told the Free Beacon. "She said Grassroots was writing a book or something. But she also mentioned to me that it was important that I not say anything to anyone because it was really just a vacation."
As of the publication of this article, neither Black Lives Matter Grassroots nor Abdullah have published a book.
I hope this doesn't come to blows or bullets!
It's so weird how these black grifter groups, like the one fronted by skinny slippery-ass bitch Ibrahim X. Khendi (real name Henry Rogers or something) which similarly took in millions and produced nothing.
How the once-edgy and anti-establishment Vice went woke and went broke. As told by a former Vice reporter who was there for the downfall.
The beginning of the end came in 2017.
After a New York Times report exposed the supposedly sexually charged "boys' club" atmosphere at Vice--a magazine started by three boys in 1994--a clutch of employees publicly condemned their employer for its past and demanded that the company that paid their salaries start acting like an entirely different company.
Vice co-founder and CEO Shane Smith, once a frequent presence in the New York office, retreated to his $50 million L.A. mansion and transferred control of the company to a female CEO, former A&E Networks head Nancy Dubuc. A staff-wide email from Smith and fellow Vice co-founder Suroosh Alvi, sent hours before the Times story dropped, offered an expression of "extreme regret for our role in perpetuating sexism in the media industry and society in general," which rather overestimated the company's influence and overstated their sense of contrition.
After all, Vice's top leadership, in private, was far less acquiescent, bitterly arguing that the Times story was a conclusion in search of supporting anecdotes, with complicating facts ignored to sustain a predetermined narrative. Regardless, profuse apologies were demanded and frequently repeated. But they weren't enough.
One complaint was that the photos of the magazine's covers on the company's walls were offensive. Which ones?
Take your pick. Or all of them. Just take them down.
We order you to take them down.
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The covers were swiftly removed, now sequestered in co-founder Suroosh Alvi's basement office, where a number of longtime Vice employees gathered to express a collective incredulity. "The resistance starts now," one of them said hopefully. But we all saw it for what it was: a surrender.
It was the first in a cascading series of I told you so moments. In a building full of poorly paid, expensively educated young journalists, laboring on behalf of lavishly paid, expensively educated executives, it was inevitable, in an age of perpetual offense, that Vice Media would soon be consumed by controversies about its past, providing excuses to reshape its future. But if you're endlessly apologizing for the very content that created all of these jobs, as I told one executive at the time, it will end up destroying the company.
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All of this airbrushing of the past for the sake of psychological safety in the present was a harbinger of the grimness to come, partly because it provoked no audible internal dissent and went unnoticed by the outside world. As one former executive recently told me, it was then that leadership should have reckoned with the disheartening reality that "our workforce hated our brand."
This is obvious, but maybe it needs to be said anyway: The whole doctrine of Marxist critique, as explicitly stated by Marx himself, was that the revolutionary cadres should do nothing but critique, "denounce," and anathematize any institution they didn't like until that institution attempted to buy peace by making concession after concession to the Marxists.
And the Marxists did not intend reform of the institutions; they were revolutionaries. Although sometimes they tactically adjust their rhetoric to make it sound like they're asking for reforms, they're not: the end goal is the destruction of the institutions, a razing of them all to the ground, to establish a New World Order starting at Year Zero.
They say this. They make no secret of this.
But every time they do the same fucking thing, a bunch of dumbases and cucks picking the lint out of their assholes say the same thing: "Well maybe if we just meet them halfway we can buy them off."
Antifa routinely threatens to physically attack "journalists" if they film their faces, so these Brave Firefighters of course meekly comply.
They also routinely block camera shots of their public demonstrations.
But Jake Tapper says nothing. He knows who the Bad Guys are.
If you thought the Trump political persecution couldn't get more disgusting, have I got some bad news for you.
This is the country under Democrat rule.
Libs of TikTok
@libsoftiktok
Boston Mayor @wutrain said she would support a policy that refuses to prosecute the following crimes:
-shoplifting
-larceny
-disorderly conduct
-receiving stolen property
-driving with a suspended license
-breaking and entering with property damage
-wanton and malicious destruction of property
-threats
-minor in possession of alcohol
-marijuana possession
-possession with intent to distribute
-non-marijuana drug possession
Democrats want to protect criminals and put Americans in danger.
Democrats are now racing to decriminalize child sex traffickers and pedophiles in the name of "decarceration."
"Trans activist mental health counselor claims that counselors "have a moral duty to be liberal or leftist."" Calm down, Dude.